Ya wanna?

Good ole Trace Adkins, testosterone on a stick, manages to be totally alpha-male sexy and a sweet boyish guy at the same time. I am no fan of long hair on a man, but all he has to do is smile and I'm there.

Ya wanna?

Are you kidding?

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PS. And the linked song, "One Hot Mama", is a playful and steamy and actually pretty touching hymn to married love.

A US Male

This is country singer Aaron Tippin. But if it's a good day and you squint a little, we look a bit alike in this picture. You can see the differences here! Serious testosterone.

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Dirt thou art

Tag Purvis' 2000 film always irritates me and always draws me in and always moves me. Southern Gothic. Image and sound. Homoerotic. I am always sorry when it ends.

The mysterious drifter Lee Todd, played with real male fire and edgy containment of raw and tender feeling by Walton Goggins....


The blood-brother ceremony in the dark. Swimming in the river. The meeting in the cemetery.

"I don't want to live my life knowing I loved someone so dearly
but feared so much more."

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Animal welfare

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Bears repeating

The winged god Eros rules
ruthlessly
throughout the earth,
inflaming
Zeus himself,
wounded
with unquenched fires.
Ares the war god has felt those flames.
Hephaistos, too,
he who forges the three-forked thunderbolts,
and Apollo, the divine sun,
sure archer himself,
is pierced by a younger god
of surer aim,
the bane
both of heaven and earth.

Seneca, Phaedra
1st century AD
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Nobody's perfect

I have often told my guy that if I had a choice between a close-up personal encounter with him or with Brad Pitt, I'd send Brad back to Angelina without a second thought.

And that's true. 99.9% of the time.

But if the Brad pictured below got a proper haircut...maybe 99.8%? Hey, I'm only human.

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Coming out, blowing up

Rented Poster Boy, a movie where the son of a conservative Senator is closeted and gets involved with a gay activist. Everything blows up in public.

I didn't expect the film to be so angst-ridden and dark. I didn't expect to find almost every character in the film to be pretty despicable. In that respect, intentionally or not, it is more even-handed than I expected it to be. Even the "hero" activist character, Jack Noseworthy* --one of those sexy B-actors I like-- proved to be smack-in-the-mouth-worthy.


For each one of them, so much personal wrongdoing, manipulation, blindness, selfishness and so much moral arrogance. Really unappealing. Or maybe just too real on an afternoon when my own reality is unappealing.

Maybe I forget what the turmoil is like, moving out of the closet. It was a long time ago. And God knows it was not easy...or well-handled or without wrongdoing and selfishness or arrogance on my part.

The conservative Senator is a fat, cigar-chomping bully with a compliant but resentful wife. Not original. But the closeted son shows his own compulsive selfishness and cruelty, as well as lack of courage. He comes out, but in the most hurtful way possible. And the other "activists" are self-righteous children mouthing angry stupid platitudes while they use and insult each other.
(Not unlike some real life activists I've known.) The only eventually likeable characters are Noseworthy's straight female roomate, whose real victimization exempts her somewhat from blame for her depressive self-absorption, and the straight young man who befriends her despite her situation. Talk about cliches.
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*Turns out Jack has a two decade relationship with another man. Nice to know.

Hmmm

I am not economically gifted, but have asked myself this question of late. "Who is it that creates wealth?"

I have never created any wealth in my life. Aside from a summer job where I delivered furniture, my work life has consisted either in A) talking to people in order to enlighten them and/or improve their quality of life or B) managing organizations that A) talk to people in order to enlighten them and/or improve their quality of life.

Whatever I have earned in salary has been money related to sources of wealth that someone else has created.

A closing thought. If you can identify who it is that creates wealth, you really ought to treat them very well, 'cause with out them, the rest of us have nothing.

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Kali

While the State is bankrupt and such a mess that no one seems willing to run for its Governor except Mr. Moonbeam, the California Assembly --source of much of the trouble-- takes the time to ask us all not to "cuss".

My response? "What a fucking waste of time."

HT to The Boyo.

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Now please tell me

why capital punishment is not appropriate here?

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